


1,147

by viscrael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spoilers, for season 6, implied romance at the end, theyre on earth again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 23:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14964582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: He looked back down at his food. Keith wondered if he’d said something wrong, if the comment had been too harsh. If he shouldn’t have tried to push the topic at all.“One-thousand one-hundred and forty-seven.”Keith lowered his fork to the table. “…Sorry?”“That’s how many days we were stuck together,” Lance said. “One-thousand one-hundred and forty-seven. I kept track.”





	1,147

**Author's Note:**

> season 6 got me thinkin about reunions and the shows timeline so this came out
> 
> and no offense but there is absolutely NO WAY it hasnt been years since they left the garrison!!! there is no way!! saying its only been ONE year would be Pushing It and since the writers r too cowardly to give us content telling us how long its been or to like draw them even looking older ive taken it upon myself to write and draw them the way they should be rn in canon if it made any chronological sense
> 
> so heres this being angsty

Keith found Lance in the kitchen.

It was dark. The only light in the room was from the moon, shining through the window over the sink. On the window sill, the McClains kept an assortment of plants, cacti and succulents Keith didn’t know the name of, and the moonlight cast a blue glow over them. From his position at the doorway, he could only see the ones on the very left and the very right; Lance’s back blocked his vision of the rest.

“Hey,” Keith said quietly.

Lance’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t jump like Keith had expected him to. He didn’t turn around, either. “Hey.”

The window was open. Keith only realized it when he heard cicadas chirping outside, and a soft, warm breeze met him through the window’s screen. He stepped further in the room, careful of making the floorboards creak. The house was old. He wondered how long Lance’s family had lived here.

Neither of them spoke as Keith made his way across the kitchen, the cicadas buzzing some song for them. The light just barely allowed him to read the time on the clock. 2:41 A.M.

“Hungry?” Lance spoke finally. He turned around.

There was a table across from the counters and sink, and Keith leaned against one of the chairs. Wooden, bright blue, all of them seeming homemade. He wondered if they were.

“Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t eat much at dinner.”

“Didn’t like my mom’s cooking?”

“What? No, that’s not—” He cut himself off at the look Lance wore. Keith crossed his arms over his chest self-consciously. “Ass.”

“I’m just kidding,” Lance said, smiling that familiar smile—the one he always got on his face when he was purposefully messing with Keith just for the hell of it. “She’s one hell of a cook, I know that wouldn’t be the reason you didn’t eat much at dinner. There’s _no_ universe where someone _doesn’t_ like her food. Especially not when she’s in Intense Celebratory Mom mode.”

Keith didn’t know what “Intense Celebratory Mom mode” even meant, but he didn’t ask for an explanation. Often when he asked for Lance to explain the many odd things he said, it only left Keith feeling _more_ lost. At this point, it was better just to let some stuff go.

Lance pushed away from the sink, moving to the cabinets and opening them as he spoke. “Oh, yeah, by the way, you want me to make you something?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know where anything in my house is,” he said, glancing over his shoulder where Keith was still leaning against the table. “The other option is you scrounge around my cabinets when I’m not looking like a raccoon.”

“It sounds like you _want_ to make me something.”

“I’d prefer that over you scrounging. Or, you know, not getting anything to eat.”

“Fine.” Keith crossed his right ankle over his left, trying to make himself more comfortable somehow—or at least trying to _look_ like it. He wasn’t sure it was working. “Make me something to eat if you want.”

“Anything in mind?”

Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark completely, he could just make out the print on Lance’s pajama bottoms—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if Keith was thinking of the right cartoon. “No,” he said. Then, “Surprise me.”

“Can do, captain.”

Keith saw the way Lance winced at his own words a moment later, but he chose not to comment.

Four minutes later saw Keith sitting at the head of the table with a reheated bowl of macaroni and cheese and a glass of sweet tea. Lance sat in the chair to Keith’s right with his own plate of leftovers and a can of Dr. Pepper. The _pop_ when he opened it was loud in the otherwise silent house. Every one of Lance’s relatives had gone to sleep at least three hours ago.

It was only when they returned to Earth that everything caught up to them. Krolia was living in the same house Keith grew up in, but Keith chose to take the offered position of staying with Lance’s family because of the travel issues. They were here to get the blueprints from Pidge’s father, but it was difficult traveling so far from her home to Keith’s. Since the Garrison was a boarding school, there was an issue of where all of their families _lived_ ; they were all in state at least, but that meant little when it was still an hour drive between Keith’s home and the Holt’s.

Lance lived the closest to Pidge, and Hunk wasn’t far behind in terms of proximity, but Keith and Shiro were a different story. So they decided to stay somewhere closer for the time being—just while the replacement ship was in the works. Shiro, having spent years with the Holts and quite nearly almost died for Matt on several occasions, was immediately offered a place with them.

And Keith with the McClains.

His gut reaction was to reject the offer. He didn’t want to impose on them like that; the offer was sweet, but he couldn’t imagine making all that small talk with Lance’s family and, holy shit, there was a lot of them; he had never been good with people and after all the time spent in space all he really wanted to do was be _home_. He made up a hundred excuses for why he couldn’t stay with the McClains.

But, well. The Holts had a small house and only space for one person, Hunk was already housing Allura, Coran, and Romelle, and staying at his own house would mean anywhere from one to three extra hours every day if he wanted to be there for the rebuilding.

Slowly, the excuses stopped feeling reasonable. He decided to take Lance up on the offer—only for a few nights while they were working on the ship, then he would be out of their hair, he _promised_ them. But the McClains had been so nice about it, so genuinely excited to see him and get to know him and care for him, that he’d almost started feeling bad for putting a deadline on his stay.

So he was here. In Lance McClain’s kitchen. At two, almost three in the morning. Eating leftover mac and cheese from a purple floral bowl with Lance’s mom’s homemade sweet tea to complete the meal.

Maybe this should have been normal. Maybe Keith shouldn’t have been this unsettled or uncomfortable with this—after all, he’d certainly been in far crazier, more dangerous, and more ridiculous situations since he left Earth.

But somehow, it was the mundaneness of it that really got him. Or, no, actually. That wasn’t the right word—it was the _domesticity_ of it that was bothering him. Lance, eating next to him, wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajama pants he probably inherited from a sibling, his hair messy from sleep (or at least tossing and turning). The pen scribbles on the wooden kitchen table, obviously from children who hadn’t yet learned not to draw on tables, one of which was even a cartoon doodle signed with Lance’s name in childish font. The probably-homemade chairs, scratching against the floor as they were pushed back to stand up, and the way the floor creaked, signs of aging. Succulents on the window sill. Cicadas outside over the sound of the ticking-ticking-ticking clock.

Domestic.

Family. Home.

Keith didn’t miss the way that Lance barely touched his food. He’d made a big fuss about how Keith couldn’t go to bed again without eating something, commenting on how he’d hardly had anything at dinner earlier and _c’mon, you’ll just wake up hungry again otherwise_ , but now Keith watched his fork hover over the mac and cheese, elbow resting on the table and face tilted down.

He looked far away.

The sweet tea was cold from being in the fridge for hours. Keith lowered his glass to the table before reaching across it and, gently, setting his hand near Lance’s bowl. Just enough to get Lance’s attention.

“Is there something up?” he asked as casually as he could.

Lance looked up from his fork, still suspended over his food. For a moment, he stared at Keith. Then he was back to his food again, saying, “Nah, just kinda tired,” before shoveling a bite into his mouth.

Keith resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Come on, I’m not stupid. That’s your go-to when there _is_ something up.”

“What?”

“Don’t act like it isn’t.”

“No, no, I just—” Lance swallowed his bite before he continued. “I hadn’t realized you noticed that.”

“Of course I noticed. We were kind of stuck together for a while, Lance.”

He looked back down at his food. Keith wondered if he’d said something wrong, if the comment had been too harsh. If he shouldn’t have tried to push the topic at all.

“One-thousand one-hundred and forty-seven.”

Keith lowered his fork to the table. “…Sorry?”

“That’s how many days we were stuck together,” Lance said. “One-thousand one-hundred and forty-seven. I kept track.”

“You…you kept track,” Keith repeated.

Lance looked at him for a moment like he was going to cry, but what came out was a laugh instead. “Yeah. The second we got on the castle I started keeping a tally. I ticked off every day we were out there in my bedroom, on the wall next to my bed with a pen Coran gave me. I mean, days are relative to the planet and whatever, so I’m sure it didn’t translate _perfectly,_ but every time we went to sleep and woke up again and, you know, _started_ our day, I ticked one off. And it was at one-thousand one-hundred and forty-seven tallies when we landed here.”

Keith wasn’t sure what to say. Lance took a deep breath, composing himself. Or maybe calming himself. Keith wasn’t sure about that thing either.

“So I know we were out there together for a while,” he said. “You don’t…There’s no need to remind me.”

The cicadas had seemed to get louder. Keith took another bite and chewed slowly, the macaroni sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Lance mumbled, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Is that what was up?”

“More or less.” He glanced up from his bowl to catch Keith’s eye, only to look back down again once he realized Keith was watching him. Keith tried to stifle any embarrassment at being caught staring before it could steal his attention from the matter at hand. “It’s three years and almost two months, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

Keith had been, but he hadn’t been about to ask either. He nodded.

“It’s just—” Lance seemed to lose the sentence, sitting with his mouth open, looking lost—far away—the same way he had earlier, and Keith got the sense that he’d intruded on something heavier than he’d originally thought when he entered the kitchen and that it was coming back full force now. He thought about the way Lance’s family hadn’t been able to leave him a moment to himself since he got here. About the way Lance hadn’t wanted to leave _their_ sides either. The heaviness in his shoulders. He thought about the scar on Lance’s right shoulder from a blade that grazed him a little too closely during battle one time—the scar on his left eyebrow from being nicked by a different blade—the many burn scars Keith knew he must’ve had from blasts and explosions that got a little too close to him—the reminders of life as a paladin.

He thought about the broadness of Lance’s shoulders and the few inches of height he’d gained during their three years in space. He thought about Lance all that time, falling asleep at night with a pen in his hand, marking off another day before drifting into unconsciousness, never sure when he would see his family again but hoping, hoping, hoping.

And he thought about the two-year-old daughter Lance’s sister had. About how Lance missed his niece’s birth. About how Lance, at twenty years old now, missed his own high school graduation. Senior prom, college admissions, his eighteenth birthday with his family—and his nineteenth, and his twentieth, all missed. And they hadn’t exactly been diligent about birthdays while they were fighting the Galra. Keith honestly couldn’t remember if they even ever _had_ a birthday party for Lance.

He thought about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama pants Lance wore, and about how he’d overheard Lance’s older sister telling him that he’d have to wear some of his brother’s stuff since a lot of his clothes had been thrown out or kept away in storage—his family had assumed he was dead, after all. Keith thought about the grave they’d already dug him. The headstone. About the mourning. He remembered the smile Lance’s mother had given him when he was introduced to her, about the wrinkles across her kind face, and he thought about her being forced to accept the truth that her son was gone, about the way her smile must have contorted with grief.

Keith thought about the way Lance stared at his barely-touched food right now, about how tense his shoulders were, and the way his eyebrows pinched together, the scar over his left one twitching with it. He thought about the way Lance’s hand clenched around the handle of his fork. Jittery. Or overloaded. He thought about the half-laugh Lance gave him earlier.

“It’s okay,” Keith said. He inched his hand a little closer to Lance’s where it rested on the table. “It’s okay. I get it.”

Lance looked from his bowl to Keith’s pinky, less than an inch away from his own hand.

“We missed so much,” he whispered.

“I know. We did.”

Keith felt more than saw the moment Lance finally allowed himself to cry. Then it was visible: shaking shoulders. Soft, but still audible sniffling and hiccups over the cicadas and the clock as it struck three A.M.

Lance moved his hand to touch Keith’s.

**Author's Note:**

> ive said it once and ill say it again:
> 
> voltron is a war story thats trying desperately not to be a war story so im going to do everything in my power to write fics that explore the fact that the paladins were basically soldiers in space and also literally gone for years from their homes while still only children (minus shiro but ya know what i mean)
> 
> also its basically all i think abt
> 
> drop me a comment if u want or go c me on [tumblr](http://viscrael.tumblr.com) for more content irt them being in space for 3 years


End file.
